For those you that have blown a lower intake manafold gasket, and have not ever done one yourself, and want to, do not worry! Its easier than you may think. Its several hundred dollars to pay a mechanic, you can do it yourself for about $100 in parts. You'll need to get the distributor retimed, but that is another topic of discussion, and I will get to that further down the thread I had to do this twice! Not fun! Doing it a second time helped me learn a lot of extra tricks I want to share so the procedure can be a lot easier for those of you that have not done it and want to.

YOU WILL SPECIFICALLY NEED:
1. Crows foot wrenches
2. Tubing wrench
3. New oil and oil filter
4. New coolant.
5. Gaskets obviously

GENERAL PROCEDURE:

1. Disconnect battery
2. Drain coolant
3. Disconnect all coolant hoses
4. Disconnect all electronic connectors
5. Disconnect everything left on upper manafold
6. Remove serpentine belt
7. Unbolt AC unit, it can be pushed to the side
8. Bring power steer pump forward, it blocks the removal of the drivers side front manafold bolt, I will go into more detail about that in my next section.
9. Remove the distributor, remove the cap and be sure to mark the rotor position, because you want it to start later right? The distributor itself does not need to be marked in its position, because it only bolts down one way. The timing will be off by a little, but not much. It's inevitable.
10. Remove fuel lines, you will need crows feet wrenches and a tubing wrench, its a "one wrench holds and the other wrench turns it" job.
11. Remove manafold, there are 8 bolts.
12. Clean manafold ports, upper and lower, scrape off all dirt and gasket, make it as clean as possible.
13. Drain oil, and remove the oil filter, its best to do this after you scrape off dirt. There will be coolant and more than likely some dirt that was scraped off in the oil.
14. Put gaskets in, and put RTV on the back and front, I will talk more about this in my next section.
15. Properly torque all bolts to specification. A Haynes Manual will have all the information you need.
16. Put it all back together

TIPS:

1. I mentioned bringing the power steering pump forward, some believe you need to remove the pulley to bring it forward, this is false. There are 3 bolts and 1 nut to bring it forward on the front. 2 bolts and the 1 nut are easy to find, the last bolt is located next to the bottom left of the pulley. I removed the fan to get to the bolt, it made it very easy to access it, removing those will bring it forward.

2. The alternator does not need to come out!

3. Quick suggestion after draining the oil, I would flush it out with a fresh quart of oil to be sure all coolant and dirt is out. I would let it sit for a day or two to drain well.

4. I talked about retiming the distributor, its computer controlled, and can't be turned to adjust it like on older cars with a distributor, if you have what is required to retime it, by all means, do it yourself, otherwise, pay your mechanic to retime it. It shouldn't be too expensive, I had my mechanic retime mine for about $150 dollars.

5. Put coolant in the coolant ports or "water jackets" in the front of the manafold after you've properly reinstalled it, this will help open the themostat, and prevent the car from overheating.

6. RTV is important! Do not be shy with putting RTV on the front and back of the engine, this is why I had to do this repair twice, not enough RTV on the back of the engine. Ask your autoparts store about the best RTV you can get for the job, you should be sent in the right direction.

7. Use a well known brand gasket like Fel Pro, my Fel Pro gaskets are plastic, but Fel Pro makes sturdy plastic intake gaskets, as well as metal intake gaskets, but metal gaskets need to be secured with RTV, plastic gaskets are made to lay in the manafold perfectly. The choice is yours!




Whew, that was long, but I hope this helps those of you that are considering doing this repair yourself! If you have any questions please let me know! I will be happy to answer them!

 

Thanks for taking the time to write this up.

I'll put it where it will be more easily found.

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